More than 28,000 illegal knives seized at Niagara Falls border crossing

Published December 29, 2021 at 10:20 am

If you can flick it, the Canada Border Service Agency (CBSA) will nick it.

Someone or some group/business found that out the hard way yesterday (December 28) as a commercial truck carrying more than 28,000 knives saw its cargo seized by the CBSA at the Queenston-Lewiston border crossing.

The biggest problem besides the sheer quantity (possibly undocumented) and value of $172,000? They were classified as switchblades.

That’s been a big no since January 5, 2018 when the CBSA issued new restrictions over what could come into Canada from the U.S. At the top of the list was switchblade knives.

One of the new enforcements back then was “knives that require some preliminary or simultaneous minimal manipulation of either a flipper or other non-edged parts of the blade. Knives that can be opened with the flick of your wrist are prohibited.”

On their website back in 2018, Canada Customs said knives were banned as illegal weapons if “a knife has a blade that opens by centrifugal force, when the blade is released from the handle into the fully ejected and locked position with a simple and brisk outwardly flick of the wrist and that it includes knives that require some preliminary or simultaneous minimal manipulation of either a flipper or other non-edged parts of the blade.”